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2023 Hackaday.io Low-Power Challenge

A project log for All-In-One Gamma-Ray Spectrometer

More sensitive to gamma radiation than a Geiger counter with the added bonus of telling exactly what's inside your samples!

nuclearphoenixNuclearPhoenix 02/07/2023 at 13:540 Comments

Today I found out about the new Hackafay low-power challenge. It's a great way to encourage makers to reduce power requirements as much as possible. While this project is not the most ideal for this kind of challenge, I'll look at what I can do anyways, because why not? As a great side benefit, standalone operation on power banks will get more efficient as well ;)

The current design draws about 100 - 200 mW (rough estimate the last time I measured), most of which goes to the Raspberry Pi Pico. I'll take power draw into consideration for the next hardware revision (e.g. replacing the OPA356 with another OPA357 which only draws half the power, or generally optimizing all the voltage dividers), as well as the software side of things. There is so much potential to make the Pico more energy efficient, but as far as I know, the software support isn't too great as of now. I'll look into it.

Keep you updated! :)

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